The Monty Hall problem is a logic puzzle named for the host of the gameshow Let's Make a Deal. It's one of my favorite such problems, because it's an example of math completely contradicting my gut instinct. Even though I know the math says to do one thing, my gut consistently says the other -- and thus every time the problem is explained, I get a little window into my fallible human brain. In fact, I used to be so tied to my gut on this one that I would fail to explain the Monty Hall problem correctly when describing it to others, because I always assumed my gut instinct was actually correct. (Yes, I took Math for Liberal Arts Majors.)

Marilyn vos Savant posed the problem in one of her columns like so:

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

I won't spoil the answer. Think on it for a moment. Do you switch or not? Now watch this AsapSCIENCE video for a brief explanation of what math says is the right thing to do...and what my gut says is crazy:

Having said all this, it's important to note that we have a shared assumption that a car is better than a goat. But if we're talking about one of those awesome unicorn goats, maybe you want that instead.